Currently, video display technology is divided into analog type display devices (such as cathode ray tubes) and digital type display devices (such as liquid crystal display, or LCD, plasma screens, etc.), each of which must be driven by specific input signals in order to successfully display an image. For example, a typical analog system includes an analog source (such as a personal computer, DVD player, etc.) coupled directly to a display device (sometimes referred to as a video sink) by way of a communication link. The communication link typically takes the form of a cable (such as an analog VGA cable in the case of a PC, otherwise referred to as VGA DB15 cable) well known to those of skill in the art. For example, the VGA DB 15 cable includes 15 pins, each of which is arranged to carry a specific signal.
One of the advantages of the VGA DB 15 cable is the ubiquitous nature of the cable, due to the large and ever-expanding installed base. As long as the analog systems described above predominate, there is little incentive to migrate away from any other cable form than the VGA DB15.
However, in recent years, the exploding growth of digital systems has made the use of digital capable cables such as Digital Visual Interface (DVI) cable more desirable. It is well known that DVI is a digital interface standard created by the Digital Display Working Group (DDWG). Data are transmitted using the transition minimized differential signaling (TMDS) protocol, providing a digital signal from the PC's graphics subsystem to the display. DVI handles bandwidths in excess of 160 MHz and thus supports UXGA and HDTV with a single set of links.
Unfortunately, however, it is difficult and costly to configure DVI based interfaces to support higher resolution systems such as WQSXGA (3200×2048 image resolution) with a color depth of 24-bits per pixel at 60 Hz. or QSXGA (2560×2048).
Therefore, it would be desirable to be able to provide a cost effective display interface that can efficiently accommodate a wide range of display resolutions.